Because of what I do [compiling the Almanacs] I see a lot – the Times, Guardian, Telegraph, Daily Mail, New York Times, Wall Street Journal: I'll normally look at them online and create my own newspaper. As for writers, I'm keen on parliamentary sketchwriters: Quentin Letts in the Mail, Simon Hoggart in the Guardian, Simon Carr in the Indy. Letts is up there as one of the great sketchwriters.

Magazines

Not so many; the Economist, which for some reason calls itself a newspaper, Condé Nast Traveller, the New Yorker; obviously Private Eye, and the Spectator, which is very good at the moment. I spend quite a bit of time in the US, and I will get American magazines when I'm there, including Vanity Fair and New York magazine, which is well-designed and very sharp. There's something about New York media, you always feel they're just ahead of the zeitgeist.

Television

A great deal of American TV viewed on Hulu, which is superb – 30 Rock, for instance, is on very good form. I'm usually at least a year behind everyone else in seeing popular television, so I'm only now ploughing through The Wire and didn't watch The Sopranos until last year. Some great old British TV – I just rewatched [Alan Bleasdale's] GBH. I'm strangely drawn to Top Gear, and wonder why no one's done more with that format – a Top Gear of gadgets, for instance. And I'm fascinated by its link to the armed forces, why they turn up in it so often.

Radio

Lots of radio – in order of how much I listen to them, [BBC Radio] 4, 5 [Live], 7, 6 [Music], 2 and 1. On Radio 4 there are great comedies, like Bleak Expectations, and Eddie Mair on PM is just superb. Any Questions is a really interesting counterpoint to Question Time. The radio's pretty much always on, and I also listen to some American podcasts, such as for National Public Radio and Newsweek.

Online

I follow blogs, particularly all the main political ones – Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale, Coffee House, Paul Waugh, Iain Martin in the Wall Street Journal, and so on. And some American ones, like the Huffington Post, Gawker, Boing Boing; or Eater and Daily Candy, also American, which are about where to go to eat. The web can be a fast trip to the library, giving you immediate access to a government report, or it can filter media for you, which is why I look at around 15-20 of these sites every day.

Adverts

I worked in advertising – though only for about six months – and I'm a fan of Alexander the meerkat, and curiously obsessed with Dixons' recent ads, which began with a kind of parody of a commercial for Harrods or John Lewis, but ended by suggesting Dixons instead as "the last place you want to go".

Books

At the moment Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami, but my all-time favourite writers are Evelyn Waugh and PG Wodehouse.